Middle East threatens to distract Obama from Asia-Pacific

ELEANOR HALL: The crisis in Gaza is also overshadowing the US president's first overseas trip since his re-election.

Barack Obama's tour of Thailand, Burma and Cambodia was supposed to demonstrate his commitment to Asia as part of his foreign policy pivot to the region.

But the violence in Israel and Gaza is raising questions about whether the US can switch its focus from the Middle East and assert its economic and diplomatic power in the Asia-Pacific.

From Washington, Kim Landers reports.

KIM LANDERS: The US president Barack Obama says it's "no accident" he's made Asia his first foreign trip since his re-election. But even as the president turns his sights to the Asia-Pacific, renewed violence in the Middle East is competing for his attention.

SCOTT BATES: This is a real test of will this pivot to the Pacific be real or be rhetorical and to date I think it's very important to notice that the president isn't hunkered down in the Rose Garden, studying maps of the West Bank.

KIM LANDERS: Scott Bates is the president for the Center for National Policy, an independent think tank in Washington. He believes the unrest in the Middle East will continue for the next decade and that while the United States will always stand by its allies in the region, there's already been a subtle policy shift.

SCOTT BATES: I don't believe the US will be looking for opportunities to deepen its involvement in the Middle East. That was the policy of the Bush administration when it talked about transforming the Middle East. That's no longer US foreign policy or defence policy.

KIM LANDERS: Even as Barack Obama juggles phone calls to the leaders in Israel and Egypt with the East Asia summit in Cambodia, one of the president's top aides says they never considered scrapping the three country Asia visit.

Jeffrey White, who's a defence fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, agrees with that choice.

JEFFREY WHITE: The president travels with a very large communications and capable communications package and he can basically reach out and, you know, touch any place in the world that he needs to.

KIM LANDERS: From the start of his presidency, Barack Obama made a deliberate choice to try to avoid getting ensnared in the troubles in the Middle East. But Jeffrey White says that's difficult to achieve.

JEFFREY WHITE: The Middle East keeps intruding into almost every president's plans for, you know, grand diplomatic schemes. So it's one thing to say we want to have a light footprint and not be involved but in reality it's quite difficult to completely stay out.

KIM LANDERS: Barack Obama has called himself America's first Pacific president, as he tries to re-orientate US foreign policy. Scott Bates from the Center for National Policy says some of the shift is designed counter China's economic and political power.

SCOTT BATES: It's a delicate dance to be sure, but we must get it right and if the US-China relationship goes well then really the sky's the limit in terms of peace and prosperity in the Pacific and if it doesn't then it's trouble for all.

KIM LANDERS: While the president has only just been re-elected, the White House clearly sees this pivot to Asia as a foreign policy legacy of the administration.

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